The present invention generally relates to fabrication methods and resulting structures for semiconductor devices, and more specifically, to P-N junction based devices with single species impurity for P-type and N-type doping.
A P-N junction is a boundary or interface between two types of semiconductor materials, P-type and N-type, inside a single crystal of semiconductor. The “P” (positive) side contains an excess of holes, while the “N” (negative) side contains an excess of electrons in the outer shells of the electrically neutral atoms. This allows electrical current to pass through the junction only in one direction. The P-N junction is created by doping, for example, by ion implantation, diffusion of dopants, or by in-situ doping during epitaxy (growing a layer of crystal doped with one type of dopant on top of a layer of crystal doped with another type of dopant). P-N junctions are elementary building blocks of semiconductor electronic devices such as diodes, bipolar transistors, field effect transistors, solar cells, light emitting diodes (LEDs), and integrated circuits. For example, a common type of transistor, the bipolar junction transistor, consists of two P-N junctions in series, in the form NPN or PNP. A diode can be made from a single P-N junction.